Professor Wolfram Berger is Vice President for Internationalization at BTU

"Prof. Berger has many years of international experience as a professor and vice president at various universities in Europe, Africa and the USA," emphasizes BTU President Prof. Gesine Grande. "Experience that makes him ideally qualified for the position of Vice President for Internationalization and the strategic development of our university in this area. Internationalization is a very important cross-cutting issue for the future development of our university. We want to build on our strengths as a cosmopolitan university that is highly attractive to international students, academics and scientific institutions and universities. This requires existing strategic partnerships, such as in our European University Alliance Eunice, but also new ones in Europe and around the world. I am extremely pleased to have Mr Berger on our executive committee, a member who will take our university a big step forward in terms of internationalization."

Prof. Wolfram Berger is looking forward to his new tasks: "I would like to thank the university management and the Senate for my election and the trust they have placed in me. BTU is making good progress in the area of internationalization. This is shown by our student numbers, our partnerships, our projects and our membership of the EUNICE alliance. Our International Relations Office, our students, our researchers and our research department are doing an outstanding job. I would like to build on this and further increase our visibility as an intercultural university. My goal is to further develop internal university infrastructure and support structures and to fund intercultural skills among our employees in order to support the even better integration of foreign students at BTU and in the region and to attract young researchers to Lusatia."

About the person

Prof. Dr. rer. pol. habil. Wolfram Berger has held the Chair of Economics, in particular Macroeconomics, at BTU since 2010. Prior to that, he was Professor of Economics and Head of Department for Accounting, Economics and Finance at the Catholic University of Lille in France for several years, during which time he headed the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics. He spent 2012 and 2013 as Professor of Economics and Head of the Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics at Oxford Brookes University in England. Between 2020 and 2023, he worked at the ICN Business School in Nancy, France, as Vice President Research and Academic Development. Prof. Berger has also taught as a visiting professor at EMLYON Business School, the Graduate School of Business at the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Texas at San Antonio, as well as spending a semester as a visiting scholarat the University of Cambridge.

At BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Prof. Berger's roles between 2016 and 2020 included Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Business, Law and Society, Chairman of the Examination Board for Business Administration and Engineering study programs, Speaker of the Institute of Economic Sciences and member of the Business Administration and Engineering Commission. He is currently director of studies for the university's business administration degree programs and a member of the faculty council of Faculty 5.

Internationalization at the BTU

Internationalization is one of the university's strategic goals in order to further expand its performance both nationally and internationally. It has been successfully establishing English-language courses for a long time, resulting in a steady increase in the number of international students enrolled The proportion of first-year students from abroad is currently 47 percent. In terms of the total number of students, around 44 percent come from abroad. Students from over 120 countries are enrolled , with India, Pakistan and Bangladesh being the most strongly represented.

BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg has 14 English-language study programmes, mainly Master's and PhD programs, including a number of study programmes with bi- and tri-national degrees. The university maintains academic cooperation with a total of 222 universities around the world.

As part of the European University Alliance EUNICE, BTU is developing its own European identity, which strengthens the university's profile and the quality of its teaching, research and innovation. The ambitious transnational alliance of seven medium-sized universities, which are equally located in European regions affected by structural change, forms a network in which long-term, structural and strategic cooperation is developing.

In the DAAD funding balance sheet, BTU also achieved top rankings in 2022, as the evaluation published by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in the summer shows. Whether in individual or project funding, students, graduates and international projects benefit from established structures, targeted measures and many years of experience in internationalization.